portion only. We can not conclude (where causation is not concerned), because a proposition is true of a number of things resembling one another only in being animals, that it is therefore true of all animals. If, indeed, any thing be true of species which differ more from one another than either differs from a third, especially if that third species occupies in most of its known properties a position between the two former, there is some probability that the same thing will also be true of that intermediate species; for it is often, though by no means universally, found, that there is a sort of parallelism in the properties of different Kinds, and that their degree of unlikeness in one respect bears some proportion to their unlikeness in others. We see this parallelism in the properties of the different metals; in those of sulphur, phosphorus, and carbon; of chlorine, iodine, and bromine; in the natural orders of plants and animals, etc. But there are innumerable anomalies and exceptions to this sort of conformity; if indeed the conformity itself be any thing but an anomaly and an exception in nature.
Universal propositions, therefore, respecting the properties of superior Kinds, unless grounded on proved or presumed connection by causation, ought not to be hazarded except after separately examining every known sub-kind included in the larger Kind. And even then such generalizations must be held in readiness to be given up on the occurrence of some new anomaly, which, when the uniformity is not derived from causation, can never, even in the case of the most general of these empirical laws, be considered very improbable. Thus, all the universal propositions which it has been attempted to lay down respecting simple substances, or concerning any of the classes which have been formed among simple substances (and the attempt has been often made), have, with the progress of experience, either faded into inanity, or been proved to be erroneous; and each Kind of simple substance remains, with its own collection of properties apart from the rest, saving a certain parallelism with a few other Kinds, the most similar to itself. In organized beings, indeed, there are abundance of propositions ascertained to be universally true of superior genera, to many of which the discovery hereafter of any exceptions must be regarded as extremely improbable. But these, as already observed, are, we have every reason to believe, properties dependent on causation.[1]
- ↑ Professor Bain (Logic, ii., 13) mentions two empirical laws, which he considers to be, with the exception of the law connecting Gravity with Resistance to motion, "the two most widely operating laws as yet discovered whereby two distinct properties are conjoined throughout substances generally." The first is, "a law connecting Atomic Weight and Specific Heat by an inverse proportion. For equal weights of the simple bodies, the atomic weight multiplied by a number expressing the specific heat, gives a nearly uniform product. The products, for all the elements, are near the constant number 6." The other is a law which obtains "between the specific gravity of substances in the gaseous state, and the atomic weights. The relationship of the two numbers is in some instances equality; in other instances the one is a multiple of the other."
Neither of these generalizations has the smallest appearance of being an ultimate law. They point unmistakably to higher laws. Since the heat necessary to raise to a given temperature the same weight of different substances (called their specific heat) is inversely as their atomic weight, that is, directly as the number of atoms in a given weight of the substance, it follows that a single atom of every substance requires the same amount of heat to raise it to a given temperature; a most interesting and important law, but a law of causation. The other law mentioned by Mr. Bain points to the conclusion, that in the gaseous state all substances contain, in the same space, the same number of atoms; which, as the gaseous state suspends all cohesive force, might naturally be expected, though it could not have been positively assumed. This law may also be a result of the mode of action of causes, namely, of molecular motions. The cases in which one of the numbers is not identical with the other, but a multiple of it, may be explained on the nowise unlikely supposition, that in our present estimate of the atomic weights of some substances, we mistake two, or three, atoms for one, or one for several.
